It’s almost a little frightening, going off into the bush by yourself at night (What the hell am I doing?) But it’s also kind of exhilarating.

Besides, I know the trails well enough by now not to get lost. At the very worst, if something happens, I might have to spend an uncomfortable night, before another skier discovers me the next morning. After all, I’m just outside town. It’s a calculated risk I’m willing to take.

But tonight, I have the whole place to myself. There’s only one other car at the trailhead. Only one other fanatic, who shares my stupidity passion for the outdoors. I probably won’t even see them.

As I forge on through the forest, the only sounds are the swishing of my skis, and the chunk! chunk! chunk! of my pole plants. My whole universe is the 50-foot beam of light in front of me.

The trees appear ahead, glide by silstently, and disappear into the darkness. It’s a steady rhythm, as I gobble up distance, and go deeper and deeper into the woods.

Chunk! Chunk! Chunk! The further I go, the further the day’s stress gets behind me. All the bullshit, project deadlines, office politics, household chores..it all falls away from me.

The forest is quiet this time of year. It’s so different. Everything is dead and sleeping. No bugs. No birds. No frogs. No yammering, chattering squirrels.

But I’m not alone. The carpet of snow is littered with critter tracks. Foxes. Deer. Maybe the odd wolf, even.

Suddenly my reverie is interupted. There’s a flash of brown ahead, and it momentarily scares the Be-Jesus out of me. Then I realize it’s just a rabbit.

Wabbit twacks, I tell myself. Haw-haw-haw.

I now reach my favorite point in the trail. The section by the river, the furthest away from the trailhead. The opposite shore has nothing. No houses, roads, towns, nothing, for 30 kilometers in either direction.

Around me are century-old white pine that the loggers somehow missed, mast-straight, towering majestically overhead like quiet sentinels. I turn my headlamp off, and just listen.

I remember the game my Mom taught us a game when we were kids. She’d tell us to be quiet, and ask us how many different sounds could we identify.

Right now, two. The occasional (barely audible) hum of cars on the highway, a few miles away. And the tree next to me is cracking.

But in-between, for long intervals, there is silence. No wind. No movement. Nothing.

It’s so quiet, it’s deafening. My ears are almost ringing.

It’s The Silence.

And I empty my mind, and let The Silence enter my head, into every pore of my body, into the depths of my very soul.

When I did a 5 day ski tour in the Canadian Rockies a few winters ago the thing that impacted me the most was The Silence. I’ve climbed and hiked and backpacked in mountains in the summer. They’re so noisy in the summer, with waterfalls and roaring rivers from glacial meltwater. Day and night, the roar persists. In the winter … zzzzzzipppp …. it’s all sealed up in ice. The Silence, ear-ringing silence, in a vast vast setting, is earily soothing.

What about coyotes? I understand there are millions of coyotes swarming the forests, dales and countrysides pouncing on skiers and snowmobilers, cats and young children and eating them. You need to be armed at all times when outside of the downtown core so you can blast all those dangerous wild animals to smithereens and collect your prize. (Other than that it was a really nice story. I often miss the silence and the darkness of being away from the city)

“It’s so quiet, it’s deafening. My ears are almost ringing.” I *crave* this silence Friar. There is nothing like it. It’s almost like the wilderness is listening too… to what I wonder?

As you know, I went on a hike with a group a few weeks ago and all they did was walk and talk. There was a hyperness in the air; heads were staring down as they walked, or at each other as they talked. It was hurried. I eventually slipped to the end of the line to be “anti-social”. Despite all that, by the end of the hike which was about 4 hours I was so revved up I could have done it all over again… without the group.

I don’t think we have all that many coyotes here either. It’s just the city folk freaking out when they see one roaming around on land that used to be his until a couple of years ago when the suburban humans moved in and flattened the woods and now he has no place to go and nothing to eat. Also gives some people an excuse to go out and kill stuff

In the distance, you hear birds, Coqui frogs and, now and again, a stream or two, but louder than all of these is a powerful silence. It’s very hard to explain, but the silence really does overpower all else. It’s almost like a presence all its own. You literally feel it.

Yesterday, I experienced the Silence with my ski friend. While she took a photo of snow-covered trees backlit by the sun against a brilliant blue sky, I heard the Silence. I mentioned the Silence to her, and both of us stood there, listened to it, and heard our pulse in our ears.

Amazing, we were at the top of a ski mountain around the bend from the noisy ski lift, but the noise was buffeted by a bank of tall fir trees.

I’m not a religious man, but it’s as close to a spiritual experience as I’ve ever gotten.

@Friar’s Mom

It’s amazing how quiet it is up on the mountains. I remember at Banff, years ago, you taught me about “dead air”. Where you hide behind a rock, sheltered from the wind, up in the apline zone, and you can hear a pin drop.